In The Science of “Muddling Through”, Charles Lindblom offers an overview of the process of incrementalism. His central assertion is that, for wicked-problems, the rational comprehensive method of achieving solutions which examines every possible effect of an applied policy is desirable yet impossible in practice to achieve.

This is noted for several reasons. 1) For rational comprehensive methods, everyone must agree on a set of values to be optimized, which doesn’t happen in wicked-problems.

The value problem is always a problem of adjustments at a margin.

Additionally, the values are often compared against one another. It is very very hard to quantify x% of one value against y% of another. Not to mention that complex adaptive systems are highly unpredictable at large changes, let alone as small ones. Small successively iterated policy changes are his proposed alternative.

Somewhat paradoxically, the only practical way to disclose one’s relevant marginal values even to oneself is to describe the policy one chooses to achieve them.

The rational comprehensive critic could then counter, “How do we measure the effectiveness of a policy if we do not have the objectives to compare them to?“.

To show that a policy is mistaken one cannot offer an abstract argument that important objectives are not achieved; one must instead argue that another policy is more to be preferred.

Agreement on policy thus becomes the only practicable test of the policy’s correctness.

Policy is not made once and for all; it is made and re-made endlessly.

This also sounds very similar to the assertions by evolutionary-organizations and in the LEAN startup methodology. It’s just to try things over and over again and see what works and what doesn’t work. Although I suppose the LEAN startup method does try to apply some metrics to it through OKRs and other means.